4 Note-Taking Tips That Can Change Your Life

pcmag.com:

When I was a kid, I desperately wanted to become a writer. I hung around book signings and listened to authors talk about their processes. A lot of them mentioned notes. Have an idea? Make a note. Overhear something interesting? Jot it down. I was confused because I didn't understand how you could make notes and then weeks later magically remember they exist and use them in your writing. As a process-oriented person, I wanted to know every step. Where do you write notes? What kind of detail should they have? When do you look through them? How does a note go from being a thought to something more substantial?

Now that I am both an adult and a real writer (yay!), I make a ton of notes about many more things than writing. What I've learned is that the purpose of notes is to improve your life.

So what kind of notes can change your life? 

For starters, there are notes about recurring events. When something big in life might happen more than once—like moving house, having a baby, or changing jobs—it makes sense to write down what went right and what could have gone better so that the next time you do it, you can learn from past experiences. 

I call them postmortem notes. I used to work at a magazine about video game development where in each issue we had a "postmortem" feature. A few members of a team that had made a video game would write an article about what went right and what went wrong while developing it. That way, the team could learn lessons for next time, and any game developers reading the article would learn, too. I took the same practice and started making notes about my personal life whenever it seemed relevant.

The big one for me is moving house, which I do way too often and sometimes across borders. Getting the